A dirty cop- played by Shannon, in debt to the Chinese mob has to get the ticket and the cash in order to square himself. The premise calls for the bike courier hero, played by Levitt, to transport an envelope containing a laundry ticket to Chinatown, leading to a stash of cash that’s been deposited with a middleman by a Chinese exchange student- played by the cute and predictably helpless Jamie Chung. The writing’s been on the wall about this one for a while now, with it having sat on the shelf for a good at least a year (a billboard promoting NBC’s long-defunct THE EVENT is featured prominently at one point), and having finally gotten the chance to see it for myself, I’m sorry to say PREMIUM RUSH has a lot of problems- the most critical of which is a story that doesn’t make a lick of sense. There’s hasn’t been one since QUICKSILVER back in the eighties (QUICKSILVER LIGHTNING!!!) so it’s not like the premise is old hat.Īlas, PREMIUM RUSH is not the late-summer jolt it should have been. Heck, my town- Montreal is crazy enough, so I can only imagine what biking through NYC would be like, so I was definitely game for a bike-heavy thriller. I love urban biking, as it’s something I do literally every day that the sun is out in the spring/summer, and anyone who’s biked through a jammed-up rush hour in the big city can tell you- things can get pretty hairy. REVIEW: I was actually kinda stoked to see PREMIUM RUSH. PLOT: An NYC bike messenger- Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is chased by a dirty cop (Michael Shannon) who wants to get his hands on the envelope Wilee’s supposed to deliver on the other side of town.

Premium rush